Monthly Archives: March 2012

Bitcoin

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Money Supply

While the number of bitcoins in existence will never exceed 21 million, the money supply of bitcoins can exceed 21 million due to Fractional-reserve Banking.

Deflation

Because the monetary base of Bitcoins cannot be expanded, the currency would be subject to severe deflation if it becomes widely used. Keynesian economists argue that deflation is bad for an economy because it incentivises individuals and businesses to save money rather than invest in businesses and create jobs.

The Austrian school of thought counters this criticism, claiming that as deflation occurs in all stages of production, entrepreneurs who invest benefit from it. As a result, profit ratios tend to stay the same and only their magnitudes change.

In other words, in a deflationary environment, goods and services decrease in price, but at the same time the cost for the production of these goods and services tend to decrease proportionally, effectively not affecting profits. Price deflation encourages an increase in hoarding – hence savings – which in turn tends to lower interest rates and increase the incentive for entrepreneurs to invest in projects of longer term.

— Bitcoin Wiki on Controlled Currency Supply

2012.03.07 Wednesday ACHK

反轉意圖

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種子論起點 14.3

這段改編自 2010 年 3 月 20 日的對話。

「種子論」的其中一個可能名字，是「paradoxical intention」（反轉意圖）。

（安：什麼意思？）

例如，當我失眠時，如果刻意迫令自己入睡，反而會更加不能入睡。相反，如果我任由自己繼續睡不著，反而會有機會成功入睡。

入睡的意圖，會增添自己的壓力，令自己緊張起來，導致適得其反。放棄入睡的意圖，會去除自己的壓力，令自己放鬆下來，入睡的機會自然會大增。

（安：那只是「放棄意圖」，而不是「反轉意圖」。）

我有「反轉意圖」的版本。

當你失眠時，身體維持住躺在床上的狀態。但是，你要張開眼睛，心裡迫令自己，千萬不要入睡。那樣，你就有很大機會，在不知不覺間睡著。

但是，「反轉意圖」所描述的，只是「種子論」的一個小部分。

— Me@2012.03.07

2012.03.07 Wednesday (c) All rights reserved by ACHK

Time horizon

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Bezos: It does fit into my view. Our first shareholder letter, in 1997, was entitled, “It’s all about the long term.” If everything you do needs to work on a three-year time horizon, then you’re competing against a lot of people. But if you’re willing to invest on a seven-year time horizon, you’re now competing against a fraction of those people, because very few companies are willing to do that. Just by lengthening the time horizon, you can engage in endeavors that you could never otherwise pursue. At Amazon we like things to work in five to seven years. We’re willing to plant seeds, let them grow—and we’re very stubborn. We say we’re stubborn on vision and flexible on details.

In some cases, things are inevitable. The hard part is that you don’t know how long it might take, but you know it will happen if you’re patient enough. Ebooks had to happen. Infrastructure web services had to happen. So you can do these things with conviction if you are long-term-oriented and patient.

— Jeff Bezos Owns the Web in More Ways Than You Think

— By Steven Levy
   
— Wired December 2011

2012.03.06 Tuesday ACHK

The Most Evil Creature of them All

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    [Scene: A scientist is in a Frankensteinesque laboratory mixing chemicals in a beaker.]

Scientist: I have combined the DNA of the world’s most evil animals to make the most evil creature of them all.

    [A pod reminiscent of the ones from the movie “The Fly” opens with a cloud of steam. It clears, revealing a naked human male.]

Naked Man: It turns out it’s man.

— The Scary Door

— Futurama

2012.03.05 Monday ACHK

種子論起點 14.2

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這段改編自 2010 年 3 月 20 日的對話。

為「種子論」命名的困難之處，在於它的案例太多，多到一個程度：不例子之間，有時會貌似各不相干。例如，你很難想像，「談情」和「寫作」有什麼關係。又例如，你很難發現，「Google」和「栽花」，有什麼共通之處。

— Me@2012.03.05

2012.03.05 Monday (c) All rights reserved by ACHK

Free will theorem, 2

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Block time, 3

There are logically flawed conclusions in the show made out of various careless arguments, too. For example, it’s being said that one must adopt “eternalism” – all of the spacetime, whether it is in the past or in the future – is equally real. But such a conclusion is once again sloppy. Nothing like that follows from relativity. And in fact, relativity combined with quantum mechanics implies things like the “free will theorem” which pretty much refutes eternalism.

— The Fabric of the Cosmos II

— Lubos Motl

If we consider the universal wave function, there is no collapse, then the block time is allowed.

— Me@2011.11.19

2012.03.04 Sunday (c) All rights reserved by ACHK

魚目混珠

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「明顯無毒」或者「明顯有毒」的水，對你無害，因為如果無毒，飲下也無妨；如果「明顯有毒」，你一定不會飲。真正有害的，是介乎二者之間，表面無毒，而實質有毒的東西。

同理，「完全好人」或者「完全壞人」，對你無害。真正有害的，是介乎二者之間，似是而非的物體。

例如，一個壞人如果壞之餘，同時有很多優點，你就有可能不可以，和他立刻斷絕來往，而要暫時繼續，忍耐他的缺點，承受他的攻擊。

又例如，一個善良的人，如果過份愚昧，就會做了很多壞事，自己也不知道。而他身邊的人，亦可能因為見他善良，而對他毫無防範，最終身受其害。

— Me@2012-03-03 9:56:17 AM

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2012.03.04 Sunday (c) All rights reserved by ACHK

Brain

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If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn’t.

— Emerson M. Pugh

— As quoted in The Biological Origin of Human Values

2012.03.03 Saturday ACHK

種子論起點 14

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這段改編自 2010 年 3 月 20 日的對話。

長遠來說，在不影響準確度的前提下，我們應該為「種子論」改一個震撼一點的名字。即使是一個十分利害的道理工具，如果沒有一個驚奇的名字，人們就不會留意，不會理會。

— Me@2012.03.03

2012.03.03 Saturday (c) All rights reserved by ACHK

Anthropic principle, 2.3

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In fact, lots of astrophysicists think the anthropic issue, rather than signaling a problem with modern science, points toward a deeper understanding of the universe. Rees likes to use our solar system as an analogy. Says Rees: “If Earth were the only planet in the universe, you’d be astonished that we just happened to be exactly the right distance from the sun to be habitable.” That would be absurdly improbable, but it becomes much less so when you realize that the Milky Way almost certainly has millions of planets. With so many possibilities, it’s not surprising that at least one planet is friendly to life.

And so, he contends, it might be with the cosmos. What we think of as the “universe,” argues Rees, could well be just one of trillions of universes on an indescribably vaster stage called the multiverse. Each of those universes would have different laws and characteristics. Most of them are totally unlivable; like Earth, ours just happens to be one of the lucky ones.

— Cosmic Conundrum

— By Michael D. Lemonick; J. Madeleine Nash

— Time (magazine)

The correct version of anthropic principle should be called the anti-anthropic principle.

— Me@2011.11.10

2012.03.02 Friday ACHK

Teller 2

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7. If you are given a choice, you believe you have acted freely. This is one of the darkest of all psychological secrets.

When I cut the cards, I let you glimpse a few different faces. You conclude the deck contains 52 different cards (No. 1—Pattern recognition). You think you’ve made a choice, just as when you choose between two candidates preselected by entrenched political parties (No. 7 — Choice is not freedom).

— Teller Reveals His Secrets

— By Teller

— Smithsonian magazine, March 2012

2012.03.02 Friday ACHK

Anthropic principle, 2.2

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You may say – and some people actually say – that the anthropic reasoning is not similar to religion, but instead, it is analogous to Darwin’s theory because the Universe “compete” much like the animals, and there is no explicit God there. Well, it is as analogous as much as the evolutionary theory itself is analogous to creationism, but not more. Darwin’s theory has pretty well-defined rules and mechanisms. The animals are doing all these familiar things and they live together – and compete – according to some schemes that are deeply rooted in biology, chemistry, and physics – and that we can predict.

On the other hand, the arena of very many Universes that “compete” has no testable rules like that, and therefore it mimicks religion. (Of course, if someone could derive really exact rules that govern the Universes in the multiverse, the situation would change.)

— The anthropic lack of principles

— Lubos Motl

2012.03.02 Friday ACHK

Rejection 3

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You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance.

— Ray Bradbury

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不要強勢, 不要弱勢, 要平等.

— Me@2009.10.06

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2009.10.12 Monday (c) ACHK

地獄篇（前傳）

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失敗是正常，成功是例外。

人生，是一個尋找例外的過程。

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地獄是正常，天堂是例外。

人生，是一個創造例外的經歷。

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唯有經過地獄的磨難，才有創造天堂的力量。 — 尼采

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— Me@2012.03.01

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2012.03.01 Thursday (c) All rights reserved by ACHK

Anthropic principle, 2.1

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The vacuum structure of the theory, called the string theory landscape (or the anthropic portion of string theory vacua), is not well understood. String theory contains an infinite number of distinct meta-stable vacua, and perhaps 10^520 of these or more correspond to a universe roughly similar to ours — with four dimensions, a high planck scale, gauge groups, and chiral fermions. Each of these corresponds to a different possible universe, with a different collection of particles and forces.

Some physicists believe this is a good thing, because it may allow a natural anthropic explanation of the observed values of physical constants, in particular the small value of the cosmological constant. The argument is that most universes contain values for physical constants that do not lead to habitable universes (at least for humans), and so we happen to live in the most “friendly” universe. This principle is already employed to explain the existence of life on earth as the result of a life-friendly orbit around the medium-sized sun among an infinite number of possible orbits (as well as a relatively stable location in the galaxy).

— Wikipedia on String theory

The correct version of anthropic principle should be called anti-anthropic principle.

— Me@2011.11.10

2012.03.01 Thursday ACHK